People think that with better D2D technology, emergency and telemetry messages will still be short and to the point. These messages will not be like streaming videos.
When companies work together on things, like spectrum and constellations and handset deals it changes how people get billed.. It does not change the fact that people want to keep the messages small when millions of devices are using the same channel.
I am curious to see if people will still talk about having satellite access or if they will start talking about paying for what they use once this is up and running. D2D technology is still going to be used for these messages.
Oh, I missed the memo that Amazon Leo is the new name for Project Kuiper, rebranded in November of last year. I saw a presentation back when it was Kuiper so have still been calling it that
SpaceX and Amazon seem to be headed for competing with traditional telecoms and ISPs. I'm betting the next acquisition target will be AST SpaceMobile. I also wouldn’t be surprised to see big telecom/ISP mergers pass regulatory approval now that they have competition from the heavens
> SpaceX and Amazon seem to be headed for competing with traditional telecoms and ISPs.
Traditional ISPs already have a nice network of copper and fiber optic cables. I don't think satellites offer any advantage to most people here, except for those living in an area with slow wired connections.
I wonder if there will become a point where these companies will be considered too big and will be forcibly cut up to smaller chunks... If feels like they have tentacles in everything now.
I guess the stack should be completed with this. AWS servers, satellite communications, boxes to view content on TVs, apps on mobiles, content creation studios, advertising, product placement, product sales. Whew!
I guess they also want expertise to launch stuff into space, in case it becomes feasible to run space data centers.
I think America in general is moving to a service based economy where you don’t own anything anymore. Everything from cars (lease) to homes (rentals) to electronics to insurance etc comes at a monthly cost. This kind of model works when the central government is trusted (or at least perceived to be trusted) to keep the wheel churning. I think the current government took some of the power back from big tech and people didn’t like it. Very interesting because the whole argument was private companies having too much power. Now the argument is government having too much power.
Why space data centers? What advantage this would have? Cooling will be a big issue, while it is easily solved on the planet earth, as we have water, air that can transfer heat away.
People point to the cost of land, but if being physically inaccessible isn’t a problem, then there are lots of cheap places on Earth you can deploy data centres too at far lower cost than launching them into orbit.
Desert land is free. Floating data centres in the middle of the pacific is free.
If a state, or even rich billionaire, wanted to take out your data centre in low earth orbit, it's only a few million dollars to launch a retrograde rocket which explodes into 10 ton of shrapnel, or even less to forget the orbit and just launch it directly up.
I don't think people are looking at this the right way. They need to be inaccessible to terrestrial and air weapons, have lower latency, not be dependent on power plants, etc.
Far easier for someone like Iran or China or the US to take out an LEO satellite than an underground data centre, or even a surface on in the case of DCs in US or China.
If you build a pyramid with the base pointing to the sun (as solar), and a "height" about 5 times the base in constant shadow, with decent internal circulation, that will operate at sub-20C just from the two radiative sides pointing away from Earth (you make the earth pointing sides reflective)
in space 1m2 of thin metal will radiate those 785 watt. No fan, no heatpump, nothing. Only the launch cost. Which given the projected Starship launch cost will be cheaper than installation on Earth.
The Utah Data Center [0] is a 200 acre plot with 35 acres of buildings.
Even prime farmland values is arround $10k an acre, or $2m, but for other land you're talking $400k for that much land [1]
It uses 65MW. The solar panels alone to generate that cost $100 per kW in bulk, or $6.5m.
That's 570GWh a year.
Mount Signal 1 Solar plant, from over a decade ago, produces about that currently. Total cost $365m [2].
Then there's the lifetime? What do you do in 36 months time when you want to replace the hardware with the latest generation? In an earthbound one you turn off the rack, remove the old kit, put the new kit in. In space, it just burns up in the atmosphere.
They would also need to protect all this stuff spread globally and into the space. No government will be able to do that - like we've already seen with the datacenters being hit in the Gulf states. Company like AMZN will have all the components for the most modern weapon system - global autonomous drone offense and defense network with the space component (or imagine a 1 GW datacenter in space temporarily rerouting its power into a laser or a microwave effector 80-ies StarWars style :) plus de-facto global intelligence network that each of these companies have, and thus will have and will be able to better protect themselves. Those large BigTechs will unavoidably have to move into defense, for themselves and as-a-service for smaller transnationals.
And what's the effect on cancer rates, etc. from all that toxic pollution to both launch the satellites and then vaporize them in the atmosphere years later?
Whatever becomes of those satellites at EOL, it is undeniable that those companies wield a lot of mass at high altitudes.
Every time now that I see a news report about a meteor hitting a house, I kind of chuckle. Because how did they know it was a natural meteor, and not a deorbited satellite or space junk? It would be sort of embarrassing for the USA to admit that a lot of mass can be now deorbited and hit the ground [or the water, or people] at high speeds and high temperatures!
Perhaps it cannot be precisely targeted yet, but I'm sure that capability will be refined in the coming years.
Space junk would come down in other countries, too. Even if there was a great conspiracy of "them" in the USA, there's plenty of others to report on it.
When companies work together on things, like spectrum and constellations and handset deals it changes how people get billed.. It does not change the fact that people want to keep the messages small when millions of devices are using the same channel.
I am curious to see if people will still talk about having satellite access or if they will start talking about paying for what they use once this is up and running. D2D technology is still going to be used for these messages.
Traditional ISPs already have a nice network of copper and fiber optic cables. I don't think satellites offer any advantage to most people here, except for those living in an area with slow wired connections.
Or possibly viasat.
I guess the stack should be completed with this. AWS servers, satellite communications, boxes to view content on TVs, apps on mobiles, content creation studios, advertising, product placement, product sales. Whew!
I guess they also want expertise to launch stuff into space, in case it becomes feasible to run space data centers.
Blue Origin is Jeff Bezos' private aerospace company
People point to the cost of land, but if being physically inaccessible isn’t a problem, then there are lots of cheap places on Earth you can deploy data centres too at far lower cost than launching them into orbit.
If a state, or even rich billionaire, wanted to take out your data centre in low earth orbit, it's only a few million dollars to launch a retrograde rocket which explodes into 10 ton of shrapnel, or even less to forget the orbit and just launch it directly up.
I don't think people are looking at this the right way. They need to be inaccessible to terrestrial and air weapons, have lower latency, not be dependent on power plants, etc.
a 1m2 at 70C radiates 785 Watt. Seems thet cooling will be more simple than on Earth.
Cooling isn't an issue.
The Utah Data Center [0] is a 200 acre plot with 35 acres of buildings.
Even prime farmland values is arround $10k an acre, or $2m, but for other land you're talking $400k for that much land [1]
It uses 65MW. The solar panels alone to generate that cost $100 per kW in bulk, or $6.5m.
That's 570GWh a year.
Mount Signal 1 Solar plant, from over a decade ago, produces about that currently. Total cost $365m [2].
Then there's the lifetime? What do you do in 36 months time when you want to replace the hardware with the latest generation? In an earthbound one you turn off the rack, remove the old kit, put the new kit in. In space, it just burns up in the atmosphere.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center
[1] https://www.land.com/property/201-acres-in-brown-county-nebr...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Signal_Solar
The randian matra of "Private = good, government = bad" always wins out
You end up with a private company run by the elite, not the people. One Dollar One Vote.
https://satellitemap.space
And what's the effect on cancer rates, etc. from all that toxic pollution to both launch the satellites and then vaporize them in the atmosphere years later?
https://bloomberg.com/graphics/2025-space-orbit-satellites-p...
Sure would be nice if the answers to these questions were not guessing before we do the damage and impossible to fix after
Every time now that I see a news report about a meteor hitting a house, I kind of chuckle. Because how did they know it was a natural meteor, and not a deorbited satellite or space junk? It would be sort of embarrassing for the USA to admit that a lot of mass can be now deorbited and hit the ground [or the water, or people] at high speeds and high temperatures!
Perhaps it cannot be precisely targeted yet, but I'm sure that capability will be refined in the coming years.
The key to strategic usage of deorbiting is that the mass is already in position, and only needs to be properly wielded.
No amount of “investigation” or reporting would stop that from happening.